After leaving Harvard, Patel lived in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan and Afghanistan, consulting for organizations including the
International Crisis Group. Prior to founding Avaaz in 2007, Patel was the founding executive director of Res Publica, a global public entrepreneurship group that worked to end genocide in Darfur and build progressive globalism in US politics, among other projects. The stated goal of Res Publica was to promote “good governance, civic virtue and deliberative democracy”. While in the US, Patel was an online member of the group MoveOn.org, from which he learned the tools of online campaigning. In 2007, Patel founded the online campaigning organization
Avaaz – with the stated goal to “close the gap between the world we have and the world most people everywhere want”. Avaaz campaigns online and off on a number of human rights, social justice, environmental, media freedom and peace and security issues. Avaaz's membership has spread to every country in the world and has more than 44 million members. Patel refers to Avaaz as a community and technology platform which "has merely given voice to a global hunger for greater democracy". ==In media==